Snakes spiders and jellyfish exist all over the world but their reputation as
being aggressive people killers is especially bad here in Australia.
There's plenty of videos and stories online claiming this country has the most
venomous or most dangerous or deadliest creatures on the planet.
There's a big difference by the way. It's pretty much become an unofficial badge of honour for
Australian tourism. Travel Down Under and you're taking your life into your own hands.
But do we deserve that reputation?
Recent studies have actually shown Australia's venomous animals cause very few deaths.
But the same can't be said for other countries.
Australia is unique in that it is the only continent to have more venomous species of snake
than non-venomous species of snake but we don't necessarily have the top whatever
when it comes to snakes, spiders, scorpions, centipedes, stingrays or any
other number of venomous lineages. When it comes to the snakes, the Australian
brown snakes and Taipans are certainly more toxic than anything else out there,
land or sea, but after that the rest of the world quickly catches up.
So how did Australia's snakes, in particular, become so infamous?
Brian fry says it's got a lot to do with a 40-year-old research paper.
In 1979, a very famous Australian venom researcher named Straun Sutherland did a landmark study looking
at the toxicity of a large amount of Australian snakes. Now he threw in what
he happened to have in the freezer of non-Australian snakes, most of which were
things like various species of rattlesnakes that drop-for-drop aren't
terribly toxic, but they make up for it by delivering huge amounts of venom.
But in this particular case they only compared equal quantities of venom.
They didn't take into account how much venom would be injected in a single bite.
To compile these lists of most venomous snakes, scientists use what's called an LD50.
It's hard to find willing human volunteers for these tests,
so they use mice instead. The LD50 measures how much venom it takes to kill
half of the mice in a trial to reach a median lethal dose. But outside the
laboratory there are many variables that complicate things.
Different snakes inject different amounts of venom and venom is often targeted and could be
more toxic to some creatures than to others, or even to humans.
Australia's inland Taipan features at the top of many lists as the most venomous based on
potency. The Eastern Brown snake comes in a close second.
But being the most venomous doesn't necessarily also mean it's the most dangerous.
The Inland Taipan lives in remote desert regions, it's rarely seen by people and hasn't
been responsible for a single human death that we know of.
The story is very different in other countries though.
When it comes to human injury and death
Australia's snakes are certainly not the most dangerous.
That dubious honour goes to three groups of vipers in the tropical developing world.
Particularly the carpet viper in India and Sri Lanka, through to northern Africa and the Middle East.
Every five minutes in India somebody dies from snake bite.
Every about minute-and-a-half in India someone is bitten by a snake.
About every three minutes in India someone is bitten by a snake and they're going to lose their
arm, their leg, or their kidneys. So in India alone, 50,000 to 100,000
people a year die from snakebite.
Australia's standard of healthcare is one reason why bites and stings are comparatively less deadly here.
And the high availability of anti-venom is another. Research from Melbourne
University shows you're more likely to be killed by a horse in Australia than
you are a snake or jellyfish. Between 2000 and 2013, 74 people were killed by horses.
Compare that with 27 deaths in the same period from snakes,
26 from sharks, 19 by crocodiles and zero, that's right, none from spiders.
In fact, the last recorded spider death was way
back in 1980 before the funnel-web spider anti-venom came along.
There was a publication from Stanford published in 2015 that showed, where my research showed
say two deaths a year from venomous snake bite, in the US, if I check my notes,
there were six deaths per year from snake bite from venomous snake bites in
the US. Also with spiders, 11 deaths from venomous spiders in the US,
whereas in Australia we've had none that same time frame. But why Australia has
that real push that it's very, very dangerous
given that the numbers, as in numbers of people, don't stack up at all.
In fact, the general fear of Australia's venomous creatures is perhaps a relatively new thing.
In the early 1800s, white settlers believed Australia's snakes were harmless.
They were hardly feared in the same way as the Indian Cobra. Until the 1820s, less
than one human death from snakebite was recorded each year in Australia.
And the Australian snakes were seen as quite wussy really. They were shy,
they would run away, they wouldn't stand their ground, and really it was leading
up to the work from abroad in the late seventies where they did animal studies
on death of snakes or lethal dose 50 where the Australian snakes they
said well actually this snake is quite potent, and it seemed to have taken off from there.
If you're interested, venom doc Bryan Fry put together an LD50 list for
us showing the world's most potent snakes drop-for-drop, and the Australian
snakes have been highlighted. We've included a list of the top 10 below.
Check it out.